What software programs are advisory firms using, and what is the market share of each program in each category?

Limited supply and high demand for high-yield municipal bonds may adversely impact an investor’s financial position. Plan now for potential client conversations about exposure to lower quality tax-exempt securities.

Legendary investor and mentor to many investing greats Benjamin Graham once aptly stated that: “investing is most intelligent when it is most businesslike.” Personally, I agree which is why I refer to what I personally adhere to and practice with my own investing as “business perspective investing.”

On how the investment industry commercialized “socially responsible investing,”
On how financial marketers built a mythology around the analytical tool ‘ESG,’
On how the United Nations abetted the sale of private profit as public good,
And why these triumphs of free enterprise obstruct progress on climate change.

Gold mining stocks have broken out, with several hitting new 52-week highs this week. Gold royalty and streaming companies, including Franco-Nevada and Wheaton Precious Metals, also hit fresh 52-week highs.

For many investors, the beginning of the year is a time for them to review their investing strategies and reassess their risk tolerance. Though the U.S. stock markets have been on an incredible run last year, recent polls of economists and American voters indicate great concern about a looming recession.

Advisors Asset Management (AAM) is a leading provider of income-generating investment solutions. It entered the ETF market in 2017 and offers investors an innovative high dividend value strategy across domestic, emerging and international developed markets. These ETFs focus on income and value, seeking to help investors meet their current cash flow and future capital appreciation goals.

So far in 2020, the yield on the 10-year Treasury has averaged 0.01 percent when adjusted for inflation. Since the end of January, it’s actually dipped below 0 percent, trading as low as negative 0.14 percent on January 31.

While red may be the color of the day, it’s a color investors have not seen from most asset classes over the last twelve months. For example, the S&P 500 rose ~26% and investment-grade bonds gained ~14%. However, just as in a healthy relationship, we cannot take this excellent performance for granted and become complacent about the future returns we expect to come our way.

Annuities can reduce the risk of running out of money in retirement, but they protect against this risk in different ways. I’ll compare retirement outcomes of SPIAs to GLWBs to understand the key product differences.

The past decade has been one for the record books. There has been unprecedented change in almost every aspect of life including technology, transportation, politics, etc.

You can build the best portfolio for your clients, but if they don’t stay invested, their chances of reaching their goals will be diminished.

Two topics seemed to dominate at this year’s Inside ETFs conference: the rise of ESG investing, and the emergence of so-called “nontransparent” ETFs. Both promise some big changes to financial markets.

As we head into 2020, municipal bonds will likely remain attractive for many tax-sensitive investors, but their performance potential could prove to be relatively muted compared to 2019, according to Sheila Amoroso, director of our Municipal Bond Department.

Every instance of financial speculation today is termed a “bubble”, but true financial bubbles are rarer than most investors believe and they go beyond the financial markets and pervade society.

The problem isn’t that market timing never works. The problem is that it works just enough to give you hope, but not enough to improve performance over the long-term.

Has passive investing helped drive the outperformance of mega-cap stocks?

Will 2020 be more of the same? Our teams are encouraged by differences they see in the new year; but they remain alert for unexpected downturns.

Markets appear to expect the Federal Reserve to hold interest rates steady during 2020. In this environment, we think the outflows seen in leveraged loan mutual funds are likely to abate, and possibly change directions.

Expect a steeper yield curve, according to Jeffrey Gundlach. Investors should be “defensive” with respect to long-term bonds. Gold will go up, inflation will be subdued, there is a 30% to 35% chance of recession and – his “highest conviction” idea – the dollar will weaken. His most surprising prediction was who will be the Democratic nominee.

Let’s walk through the first 20 years of the new millennium and the lessons for the next 20 years.

DC plan sponsors are increasingly using TDFs that blend active and passive strategies to seek lower fees and enhanced alpha potential.

Welcome to the 2020s. Some weren’t sure we would make it this far, but we did. Now we face a new decade and new challenges. How we handle them will determine what kind of conversation we have in 2030.

Sustainable investing has come a long way. In its early days, investment managers, like Saturna Capital, created faith-based investment processes, focused on excluding companies or industries that conflicted with the tenets of an investor’s faith. This led to proactive investing, often referred to as advocacy investing, a process that encourages companies, sectors, and regions to engage in better business practices.

Imagine you wake up tomorrow from a three and a half-year coma. Everything that’s happened in the meantime—the election of Donald Trump, impeachment, Brexit and more—is a complete mystery to you.

What follows is an interview I conducted with an experienced financial advisor at an anonymous, major brokerage firm. It shows how easily someone can transition from a commission-based, stock-picking mindset to acting as a true fiduciary.

Boris Johnson’s victory bodes well for Trump in 2020. The British PM’s Conservative party toppled the so-called “red wall,” winning seats across rural, working-class North and Midlands counties that had for decades been considered safe Labour territory.

Model portfolios are built on the premise that asset allocation drives long term portfolio returns. Alternative strategies like hedge funds can provide diversification benefits that may improve long-term returns and reduce drawdowns.

Next year is set to start on a high note, with consumers and the Fed keeping the economy and market afloat; but risks remain elevated, including trade and elections.

Factor-driven investing, while highly popular among equity investors, has not been widely adopted in the bond market. But new research shows how to construct highly efficient fixed-income portfolios using factors, as well as the ongoing importance of reducing expenses.

A brief monthly update on what's happening in the municipal bond market.

Predicting a major economic or financial event—whether that’s a recession, market downturn or even your own retirement—requires that you also take action. Otherwise your prediction was meaningless.

Did you know that more than $12 trillion in assets under management are engaged in one or more strategies of sustainable investment in the United States? This comprises more than 25 percent of the professional managed assets across the country and is a 38 percent growth from 2016 figures.

In the U.S., between one quarter and one third of all assets managed are done so with an ESG or SRI mandate. Outside the U.S., that percentage is even higher. The Vitium Global Fund, formerly the Vice Fund, buys what most ESG/SRI investors scorn, stocks in the tobacco, alcoholic beverage, gaming and aerospace/defense industries.

Research Affiliates discusses why they believe value investing is still alive and well and explains how changes to the display of expense ratios seek to enhance clarity for investors.

“This is not QE. In no sense is this QE.” That was Jerome Powell in early October, answering a reporter’s question on whether the Federal Reserve’s intervention in the overnight U.S. repo market constituted another round of quantitative easing (QE).

Positive returns across asset classes in 2019 may limit tax loss selling in closed-end funds, but we see potential long term value in select sectors where investors can still buy assets at a discount.

Factor performance, as conceived by Fama and French and refined by others, is based on adding the returns of a “long” portfolio of securities that most embody the factors to a “short” portfolio that least represent the factors. But it is common practice for mutual funds and ETFs to use only the long portfolio. New research show that this approach does effectively capture the returns of the underlying factors.

To get the attention of smart beta investors in a crowded marketplace, some smart beta providers are laying claim to performance that appears implausible. So what is plausible? We look at historical live performance to answer this important question.

With many investors seeking to diversify their equity exposure as the U.S. bull market charges into its historic 10th year, asset managers are now providing innovative and cost-effective SMA offerings that provide US investors access to the full breadth of the emerging market universe; a feature not previously available.

We discuss Neil Hennessy’s thoughts on the market as 2019 concludes, along with his 2020 outlook. Neil explains the key tenets of his investment strategy and why he thinks the market is not overvalued. Neil spends a great deal of his time talking to advisors and he discusses the key themes he is hearing.

While most Americans support providing free medical care to those who need it most, not imposing an additional cost on the middle class has never been accomplished by any country that has universal health care.

Baby Boomers are arriving at retirement with large accumulations that have not yet been exposed to federal income tax. I describe a program that synchronizes the distribution of pre-tax assets with availability of generationally-low tax rates, while keeping the dictates of Medicare, Social Security and the governing IRS tax code firmly in view.

Models can help advisors streamline portfolio management while retaining the level of discretion appropriate for their practice.

For SRI optimized index funds, stable ownership of a range of companies and industries provides a platform for helping investors integrate their values into their investment decisions.

Earlier this year, passive management was attacked in two high-profile articles. Those criticisms were proven to be false – and driven by active managers seeking to protect their livelihoods. But that still left the question, which I now examine, of whether flows to passive funds have increased certain risks.

-U.S. stocks entered November in the process of finally breaking out of their post-January 2018 trading range. -Along with new highs has come elevated optimistic sentiment; a near-term warning sign. -Spread between the “smart money” and “dumb money” recently reached an extreme.

College is expensive. We all know that – and that is why parents come to financial advisors to talk about how they’ll pay for it. What you and your clients’ families may not be aware of is that the posted tuitions are rarely the price anyone pays. College tuition discounts vary widely and the methodology used to calculate tuitions is not disclosed by any college.

The economic calendar is normal with a focus on housing. Some will be parsing the Fed minutes while others watch the impeachment hearings. This week’s topic may not be a media focus for the week ahead, but it gets constant attention. With a government shutdown and the debt ceiling on the agenda, let’s seize the moment and ask: Is it time to worry about debt? I suspect that many readers believe it is way past time!

S&P’s SPIVA scorecard provides persuasive evidence of the futility of active management. But its most recent scorecard illustrates something else – why active managers underperform even in the best performing asset class.